LAST YEAR, SPACE;HEATER manufacturer
EdenPURE cranked up the heat on a counter-intuitive business idea in this day and age:
Bring jobs back from China to cut costs and
manage production.

The company bought an old, abandoned
Hoover plant near its North Canton, Ohio,
headquarters and refitted it for use as a modern manufacturing operation, and also went
about the hard work of simplifying the design
of its portable space heater to require fewer
rivets and screws. A simpler design meant
fewer employees would be needed on the
assembly line, making it possible for the company to compete with its rivals’ low foreign-labor costs.

A little bit of thought and reengineering
ingenuity is paying off. Today, the turn-of-the-century building is again a bustling, busy
center of manufacturing activity. Additionally,
bringing manufacturing jobs back to northeast Ohio has had a ripple effect on
EdenPURE’s suppliers, who in turn have
expanded their U.S. workforces to meet production and raw-material needs.

Being able to say that EdenPURE’s portable space heater is made in the USA puts a
smile on the face of CEO Michael Lawrence.
“We felt it was vital to start bringing jobs back
here,” he says. “It was very prideful to see a lot
of the jobs going to people in America.”

Assembling EdenPURE’s heaters in the
company’s own backyard has resulted in quality
and efficiency gains. EdenPURE’s employees
have “been able to manufacture [a better heater]
with less money out front because there are

USp27_EdenPure_V2_R3.indd 27

fewer pieces and parts,” Lawrence says. “They’ve
made it more efficient.”

Product safety is key to creating a quality
space heater, and EdenPURE puts in hours of
testing to guarantee the quality and safety of
its products. “We are made in America, and
so our products are going to be reliable,
they’re going to be effective, and they’re going
to be safe,” says Lawrence.

He sees heaters becoming more refined,
smaller and able to use less wattage while at the
same time capable of heating more space.
Using a portable space heater to warm a room
instead of turning up the thermostat to heat the
whole house might cut down on winter heating costs, too. “This is an industry that is going
to be around for quite a while because [of] how
it saves people money,” Lawrence says.

EdenPURE’s insourcing efforts might only
be the start of more to come. “We’re trying to
bring back the quality American values of the
old days, where you could ‘buy USA’ and it was
a good, quality product,” Lawrence says. “That’s
what we’re hoping to accomplish now in our
neck of the woods with EdenPURE.”

He’s starting to see a small turn in how
U.S. companies evaluate their outsourcing
practices to far-flung places around the globe.
“People are bringing business back to
America,” he says. “If each American company
can follow suit, then we’re all going to be back
in the right direction.” C

Chris Penttila is a freelance journalist based
in Alexandria, Virginia.

Comments about Costco:
“They’re very disciplined in who they
bring to the table, what products they
bring and how they handle those
products. I feel like it’s a very good
marriage between the two companies.”—Michael Lawrence